Psychologists and anthropologists have typically turned to faith healers, tribal cultures or New Age spiritualists to study the underpinnings of belief in superstition or magical powers. Yet they could just as well have examined their own neighbors, lab assistants or even some fellow scientists. New research demonstrates that habits of so-called magical thinking — the belief, for instance, that wishing harm on a loathed colleague or relative might make him sick — are far more common than people acknowledge.

These habits have little to do with religious faith, which is much more complex because it involves large questions of morality, community and history. But magical thinking underlies a vast, often unseen universe of small rituals that accompany people through every waking hour of a day.

The appetite for such beliefs appears to be rooted in the circuitry of the brain, and for good reason. The sense of having special powers buoys people in threatening situations, and helps soothe everyday fears and ward off mental distress. In excess, it can lead to compulsive or delusional behavior. This emerging portrait of magical thinking helps explain why people who fashion themselves skeptics cling to odd rituals that seem to make no sense, and how apparently harmless superstition may become disabling.

It is no coincidence, some social scientists believe, that youngsters begin learning about faith around the time they begin to give up on wishing. “The point at which the culture withdraws support for belief in Santa and the Tooth Fairy is about the same time it introduces children to prayer,” said Jacqueline Woolley, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas. “The mechanism is already there, kids have already spent time believing that wishing can make things come true, and they’re just losing faith in the efficacy of that.”

In the study of religion, orthopraxy is correct conduct, both ethical and liturgical, as opposed to faith or grace etc. This contrasts with orthodoxy, which emphasizes correct belief, and ritualism, the use of rituals. The word is a neoclassical compound—ὀρθοπραξία (orthopraxia) meaning 'correct practice'.

Prediction 5. Routinization and orthopraxy lead to the expansion of political dominion and trade.

The process of inferring general patterns in human history has usually meant cunningly plucking out facts to fit your argument—for instance ‘cherry picking’ historical events to lend credence to your judgments about the ‘errors’ of the past and your favoured ‘prescriptions’ for the future. However flawed this methodology, alternative options were limited. Anybody seeking to use our accumulated experience of the past to predict likely patterns of history-making in the future has been limited by how much knowledge they could personally command, given the difficulties of accessing information, the limitations of brains (especially memory and processing power), and the shortness of scholars’ lifespans. To overcome these very human frailties, what has long been needed is a computerized database of global history in which patterns of correlations across space and time between variables of interest could be reliably tracked using statistical tools. Seshat: Global History Databank, a vast collection of information gleaned from the work of scholars who study the human past, will provide a new way of addressing this challenge.

DMR theory posits two clusters of features pertaining to collective ritual and social morphology in the world’s religious traditions (Whitehouse 1995, 2000, 2004, 2012). One cluster—the imagistic mode of religiosity—is characterized by low-frequency (i.e., rarely performed), high-arousal (typically painful or frightening) rituals and small but intensely cohesive communities. The other cluster—the doctrinal mode of religiosity—is characterized by high-frequency (i.e., routinized) low-arousal (often tedious and repetitive) rituals and large-scale, hierarchical, but more diffusely cohesive communities. The imagistic mode is thought to be adaptive for groups that need to stick together in the face of strong temptations to defect—for example, when engaging enemies on the battlefield or large prey on the hunting ground. The doctrinal mode is thought to be adaptive for groups seeking to pool small amounts of resource from individuals in a much larger population so as to create a large, centralised resource in the form of charitable donations, legacies, tax or tribute – for example, when competing coalitions are organized via categorical ties of caste, race, ethnicity, or belief.

Jung defines a ritual as "the practice and repetition of the original experience" which initiated a religious tradition. Such ritual can have varying effects ritual can be of "extraordinary importance" as a method of "mental hygiene." It can be a necessary means of keeping one from an "immediate experience" which might prove overwhelming. On the other hand, it can lose its efficacy for others who do seek immediate, original experience, or it can be the means to an experience one does not anticipate. "Through the ritual action," wrote Jung, "attention and interest are led back to the inner, sacred precinct, which is the source and goal of the psyche and contains the unity of life and consciousness."

"One might say that it is the particular function of sacred ritual to establish a relation between our higher and lower natures," writes Paul Jordan-Smith, "that they might properly serve one another."..."Whether uttered aloud, publicly or in private, or silently within...the repetition provides a basis for the penetration of the resonance [the content of the ritual] itself...into the heart, where it can take up residence and begin to resound on its own."

This notion is illustrated in a story from Coleman Barks about a Sufi teacher who instructed his students to repeat and reflect upon the zikr with every breath, to make it their practice, their ritual. A student asked the teacher, "But how is that possible, I mean, how could anyone do that?" The teacher smiled and said, "It is like driving a car. At first you think it is difficult, but you get used to it. It becomes natural. After a while, you can even drive and talk at the same time."

The repetition of the ritual, of the discipline or practice of the zikr, enables it to become a natural part of one's life, enables it to penetrate "into the heart, where it can take up residence and begin to resound on its own."

...our secular minds make several...grievous mistakes about [such] ritual repetition, (writes Jordan-Smith). One error is to take vivid and unusual experiences for the goal of [such rituals or disciplines], whether the result of private devotions or of public worship. The inherent dangers of this kind of error are manifold, from a kind of idolizing of the experience [itself], so that it replaces the true object of devotion, to despair when the experience ceases to be repeated.

The despair that failed hopes [and expectations] can bring is probably the source of the chief criticism of ritual, that it is empty and meaningless repetition.

What saves ritual from emptiness and meaninglessness, what gives it life and substance? What distinguishes virtual repetition from ritual repetition? As Jung suggests, and as Groundhog Day shows, it is the stepping aside, even defeat, of the ego which, when it can no longer impede the process, allows the act of repetition to penetrate "into the heart, where it can take up residence and begin to resound on its own."